'Try to Tell the Story,' by David Thomson

MEMOIR

Peter Stansky, Special to The Chronicle

Published
4:00 am PST, Sunday, February 1, 2009

122904_thomson09_ch_034.jpg Film critic David Thomson, whose book "The Whole Equation" has just been published, is programming a film series based on the book at the Pacific Film Archive. in San Francisco,CA on12/29/04 San Francisco Chronicle/Chris Hardy less

122904_thomson09_ch_034.jpg Film critic David Thomson, whose book "The Whole Equation" has just been published, is programming a film series based on the book at the Pacific Film Archive. in San Francisco,CA ... more

Photo: Chris Hardy, The Chronicle

Photo: Chris Hardy, The Chronicle

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122904_thomson09_ch_034.jpg Film critic David Thomson, whose book "The Whole Equation" has just been published, is programming a film series based on the book at the Pacific Film Archive. in San Francisco,CA on12/29/04 San Francisco Chronicle/Chris Hardy less

122904_thomson09_ch_034.jpg Film critic David Thomson, whose book "The Whole Equation" has just been published, is programming a film series based on the book at the Pacific Film Archive. in San Francisco,CA ... more

Photo: Chris Hardy, The Chronicle

'Try to Tell the Story,' by David Thomson

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Try to Tell the Story:

A Memoir

David Thomson, best known as a historian and critic of film, has now written a fascinating memoir of growing up in London. It is a multifaceted work, with elements of a rather Hitchcockian, surrealistic film noir. It reminds us - as demonstrated by the late Studs Terkel - that virtually all autobiographical and biographical accounts reveal the infinite variety of the human experience.

Thomson was born in London in 1941, in the midst of the London Blitz. He was raised in Streatham, an area of London south of the river, on the whole lower middle class and respectable, but a less interesting part of the city than most. Yet the war provided drama; one of his earliest memories is his grandmother telling him that Hitler, after his defeat, might be hiding out in the local park.

The war was ever-present in Thomson's early days, with both the empty spaces where houses had been and the abandoned and damaged houses officially off-limits but endlessly tempting as scary places to be explored. The grimness of wartime lasted well after the war was over, as austerity and food rationing continued throughout most of his childhood. Bananas had to be explained to him as something other than a mysterious skin on which comedians slipped. As he writes, England was "a dodgy place" up through the 1950s.

Thomson, who now lives in San Francisco, grew up in a house where he and his mother lived on the (American) second floor, his paternal grandmother on the first and a Miss Jane Davis on the third. She was almost impossible to understand, as she had a split palate, but nevertheless, as secretary of the Dickens Society, she helped guide his reading. His mother was his sustainer, but, as he acknowledges, she is somehow a rather shadowy figure. As an only child, he invented a sister, Sally (inspired by the movie "Harvey," in which a large rabbit is seen only by James Stewart), who provided tart commentary on his life.

But the dominant figure in Thomson's book is his mysterious father, who spent much less time with him than anyone else and who is rather glamorous in an unattractive way. This memoir is in large degree an attempt to come to terms with him.

He told his wife he didn't want children, and when David came into the world he decamped, reappearing two out of every three weekends and at holidays. Though apparently very fit, he wasn't conscripted, as he appeared to be in a reserved occupation involved with radios. It eventually became evident that he had another home, with another woman, but divorce was not contemplated. He never told David he loved him; when awkward questions came up, he went to his room. He did take David to sporting events. David was one of those boys who could easily reel off lists of players on various teams. One can see the origins of his splendid compendiums " 'Have You Seen ... ?' " and the New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

Perhaps if his father had remained at home, the young Thomson would not have had as much freedom, could not have been able to play truant from school to go to the local cinema. He had a good education at a private primary school, then he secured a scholarship at the nearby grand Dulwich College, where P.G. Wodehouse, the filmmaker Michael Powell and V.S. Pritchett had gone. Appropriately for Thomson's interests, it had been founded by the actor Edward Alleyn in the early 17th century. Thomson received an excellent education and was good at sports, but he was exposed to the brutalities of the English class system. (One suspects that such boys, thrust above themselves, might have found that they were able to cope with subsequent class tensions and confusions only by leaving England.)

At the welcome to the school, the poorer students (during a brief period after the war when such an education was available to them) were characterized publicly as cream that had come to the top, but was sour. Thomson reacted by being tongue-tied and stammering; he was grateful to the school for sending him to a therapist. He was headed toward Oxford (fulfilling the dream that others had for him) when he decided to go to a just-established film school instead; his father paid his fee, and that was his last financial support of his son.

The tale has something of an idyllic ending. While watching "Citizen Kane" (Thomson has written a study of Orson Welles, "Rosebud"), in a studio at his film school alone with Margaret, whom he thought he had loved but lost, he at last makes love to her.

So here we are told a wonderful story of the uncertainties, the unhappiness, but also the triumphs of childhood and youth vividly set against the grim background of London in the 1940s and 1950s.